Track-By-Track: O/B #07
It's difficult to put into words the lyrical achievement of this track, which functions not only as an account of the rise and fall of one ghoulish social climber, but also as a cautionary tale about the late 70s excesses of disco in general, whether as an industry or, in the eyes of the straight white people who both feared and desired it, as a 'lifestyle'.
This song is post-Saturday Night Fever, post-Disco Sucks, and marks the start of the Reagan era, so it could be read as affirming conservative values of discipline, self-regulation, conformity. Dancing and dreams of stardom are for kids; responsible adults settle down and build a home. As Tawatha Agee sings: 'Do you ever wonder, child/What you're gonna do/When the dance is through?'
Yet hidden between all of the cutting one-liners of this song – which, when put together, amount to one monumentally bitchy take-down of the protagonist – there are the lines:
"Dance.
I think I wanna dance.
FEEL the need to dance.
I think I wanna dance."
Perhaps this is the voice of our maligned dancer interjecting, but I hear it more as the narrator's inner voice letting her true desires slip. For all her sarcasm about her target's success and freedom, this admission gives the lie to her sneering: at root she too simply wants to – NEEDS to – dance. This underlying feeling is fully driven home by the irresistible groove and joyful orchestration of the tune itself, which point to the rise of 80s boogie from disco's ashes.
Mtume - So You Wanna Be A Star (Epic, 1980)
(Discogs)
Note: this is an entry in the Track-By-Track series for my mix for O/B.
Track-By-Track is a series that looks back at records you will have heard in my mixes, one by one in the order they were played. Who made them, and when? How did I come across them? And what do they make me feel?